LOS ANGELES (AP)  Cardinal Roger Mahony, who retired with a tainted career after dodging criminal charges over how he handled pedophile priests, was stripped of duties by his successor as a judge ordered confidential church personnel files released.

The unprecedented move by Archbishop Jose Gomez came less than two weeks after other long-secret priest personnel records showed how Mahony worked with top aides to protect the Roman Catholic church from the engulfing scandal.

One of those aides, Monsignor Thomas Curry stepped down Thursday as auxiliary bishop in the Los Angeles archdiocese's Santa Barbara region. Gomez said Mahony, 76, would no longer have administrative or public duties in the diocese.

"I find these files to be brutal and painful reading," Gomez said in a statement, referring to 12,000 pages of files posted online by the church Thursday night just hours after a judge's order. "The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children."

The fallout was highly unusual and marks a dramatic shift from the days when members of the church hierarchy emerged largely unscathed despite the roles they played in covering up clergy sex abuse, said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

"It's quite extraordinary. I don't think anything like this has happened before," Reese said. "It's showing that there are consequences now to mismanaging the sex abuse crisis."

Several of the documents released late Thursday echo recurring themes that emerged over the past decade in dioceses nationwide, where church leaders moved problem priests between parishes and didn't call the police.

“In one instance, a draft of a plan with Mahony’s name on it calls for sending a molester priest to his native Spain for a minimum of seven years, paying him $400 a month and offering health insurance. In return, the cardinal would agree to write the Vatican and ask them to cancel his excommunication.”

In return?!? Why would you be bargaining with molesters in the first place? Besides, both the compensation package and the letter are for the benefit of the molester, meaning there is no quid pro quo, so what is this “in return” for?

Cardinal Roger Mahony, who retired with a tainted career after dodging criminal charges over how he handled pedophile priests, was stripped of duties by his successor as a judge ordered confidential church personnel files released. The unprecedented move by Archbishop Jose Gomez came less than two weeks after other long-secret priest personnel records showed how Mahony worked with top aides to protect the Roman Catholic church from the engulfing scandal.

[Faithful Departed author Philip] Lawler points out that while less than five percent of American priests have been accused of sexual abuse, some two-thirds of our bishops were apparently complicit in cover-ups. The real scandal isn't the sick excesses of a few dozen pedophiles, or even the hundreds of priests who had affairs with teenage boys -- the bulk of abuse cases. No, according to Lawler, it is the malfeasance of wealthy, powerful, and evidently worldly men who fill the thrones -- but not the shoes -- of the apostles. In case after case, we read in their correspondence, in the records of their soulless, bureaucratic responses to victims of psychic torture and spiritual betrayal, these bishops' prime concern was to save the infrastructure, the bricks and mortar and mortgages. Ironically, their lack of a supernatural concern for souls is precisely what cost them so much money in the end.-- from the thread Kneeling Before the World

"The Dublin Archdiocese's preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church and the preservation of its assets," said the report. "All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the state"....-- from the thread Pope calls Irish church leaders to Vatican to discuss abuse report

If the InsideCatholic.com blog can be believed, two-thirds of all American bishops were complicit in covering up the immoral and illegal actions of 4% or fewer Catholic clergymen. All we can say with certainty is that 96+% - 105,302 Catholic clergymen - were never accused, yet 95 percent of all Catholic dioceses in the United States were impacted negatively. The numbers are more damning for the bishops then they are for the priests. .... Alex Murphy, Sept. 29, 2009

7
posted on 02/01/2013 7:41:12 AM PST
by Alex Murphy
("If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all" - Isaiah 7:9)

You’ve got to love Archbishop Gomez. Slowly and surely he will clean up the mess in LA. He’s a quiet, yet thorough, person. I bet a lot of cleaning house has been going on — this just got the media’s attention.

**Some church critics said Gomez’s actions, particularly against Mahony, amounted to a slap on the wrist as long as he remained a cardinal and a member of the powerful Vatican body that elects the Pope.**

I was wondering he Mahony would still be a member of the College of Cardinals.

Conclusion: "Rome" must be destroyed. All else (even the truth) is irrelevant.

There are people on this forum whose behaviour can be understood by assuming that their beliefs are as outlined above. I cannot read their minds; I do not know what they think, or how they are motivated. BUT ... if I assume that they believe "Rule One", "Rule Two" and "Conclusion" above ... I find their behaviour to be explicable and predictable.

19
posted on 02/01/2013 9:41:43 AM PST
by ArrogantBustard
(Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)

They're no different from the secular leftists in Big Media ... The Agenda (whatever it may be, in this case destroying "Rome") trumps all. Truth, completeness, context ... all are irrelevant. Even when they do accidentally publish something true, it is invariably a half truth or a distortion ... and one must always be on guard for outright falsehoods when reading any of their material.

22
posted on 02/01/2013 9:54:57 AM PST
by ArrogantBustard
(Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)

Mahony should have been sacked a long time ago. He's a destroyer, and apparently a pervert. Or at least a pervert-enabler. And, once again, the unspeakable truth.

We had a sexual abuse problem because malfeasant bishops deliberately, knowingly admitted homosexual perverts to the seminaries and bishops deliberately, knowingly ordained homosexual perverts to the presbyterate. The malfeasant bishops who did this, did it in spite of clear direction from the Pope that homosexual perverts were to be excluded from the clergy.

ANY organization, particularly one that deals extensively with children, that admits homosexual perverts to its leadership will have serious problems.

26
posted on 02/01/2013 10:19:29 AM PST
by ArrogantBustard
(Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)

Mahony should have been REMOVED years ago. Having said that, the focus should be on those who did or allowed those who attacked children, not attack the Church as a whole, but focus on removing those who either did or enabled.

I’ve read some speculation that Mahony would not have gone quietly into this good night, and keeping him on was a way of avoiding schism. Sending someone in after he has retired and does not have the energy or the remaining time to become a rallying point and having them unearth whatever was present to allow him to die with the reputation he deserves is arguably a better strategy. It isn’t the strategy that I would have used—but I’m not the Pope, and there is a reason for that.

I would have had him burnt at the stake some years ago, but that is just me.

28
posted on 02/01/2013 12:29:07 PM PST
by Hieronymus
( (It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. --G.K. Chesterton))

Two-thirds at the time—but how many of those presently in place? To quote my bishop, there is a reason people die. Those going in will make their own mistakes, but are less likely to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.

30
posted on 02/01/2013 12:46:01 PM PST
by Hieronymus
( (It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. --G.K. Chesterton))

They're no different from the secular leftists in Big Media ... The Agenda (whatever it may be, in this case destroying "Rome") trumps all."

They're one and the same thing which is obvious from the way the folks here attacking the Catholic Church always, without fail, pick up whatever "crisis" the fascist and leftist media are using to attack our rights with and try to weave that crisis into their attacks on the Church.

Look through a few posts at the thread in question and you'll see what I mean. They work here as little fry, if they do well and get noticed, they advance to being attack dogs in blogs that spread their name around and let them get known, then they advance to some low level paying propaganda spot and from there the it's onward and upward for them.

It's no accident that when the mainstream media are comparing those who defend the Second Amendment to Nazis that lies about the Catholic Church being tied to Nazis show up at exactly the same time. That's the meme of the month and so it's everywhere fifth columnists spew their lies. Next month, it'll be something else but the same comparison and the same sorts of lies will show up here in attacks on the Catholic Church at the same time they show up in democrat loving media about whoever else is the primary target for the fascists at that time.

31
posted on 02/01/2013 12:54:25 PM PST
by Rashputin
(Jesus Christ doesn't evacuate His troops, He leads them to victory.)

..And they forget that what took place in regards to child sex abuse took place in other places of worship and even in the schools as well.

I don't believe that they forget ... any more than the secular leftists in Big Media and Big Government 'forget' what the Second Amendment or First Amendment mean, or 'forget' that a 'fetus' is in fact a live human person, or ...

It's just that mentioning such inconvenient facts doesn't promote their agenda.

34
posted on 02/01/2013 1:32:42 PM PST
by ArrogantBustard
(Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)

....And they forget that what took place in regards to child sex abuse took place in other places of worship and even in the schools as well.

Nobody forgets that. The issue has never been that abuse happened because everyone knows that abuse happens. Nobody can prevent someone determined to abuse from abusing. They will find a way. That is recognized.

What the problem is is what this article admits to; the mismanaging of the abuse.

The world at least, knows how to deal with homosexual rapists of children.

It's called pressing charges, prosecuting them, and sending them to jail for a VERY long time, indefinitely at the least.

It's too bad the RCC didn't have the integrity to address the issue properly until the negative publicity from the world forced them to act.

45
posted on 02/02/2013 8:34:58 AM PST
by metmom
(For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore & do not submit again to a yoke of slavery)

“....And they forget that what took place in regards to child sex abuse took place in other places of worship and even in the schools as well.
Nobody forgets that. The issue has never been that abuse happened because everyone knows that abuse happens. Nobody can prevent someone determined to abuse from abusing. They will find a way. That is recognized.

What the problem is is what this article admits to; the mismanaging of the abuse.

The world at least, knows how to deal with homosexual rapists of children.

It’s called pressing charges, prosecuting them, and sending them to jail for a VERY long time, indefinitely at the least.

It’s too bad the RCC didn’t have the integrity to address the issue properly until the negative publicity from the world forced them to act. “

My position that I take is that, while those priests who abused children/young people MUST BE REMOVED AND PUNISHED as well as those who have ENABLED the abuse to take place in the first place.

Also at the smae time, a CRHISTIAN ROMAN CATHOLIC, I will not tolerate attacks being made against the rest of my Christian faith community just because of the horrilbe, horrible wrongs of a few.

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